Chirlane McCray Coming Out as Former Lesbian Disgusts World Net Daily Commenters

Posted on WND yesterday morning was a snippet of a New York Daily News story that was titled, “New NYC Mayor’s Wife Talks About Her Lesbian Past.” The story is a tad interesting, though not because she’s the wife of the new mayor (I hate celebrity gossip and rumors and stories, I really would have a hard time caring less). Here’s the bit that WND posted:

Bill de Blasio’s wife opened up about falling in love with a man after years of identifying as a lesbian and their life as a “very conventional, unconventional couple” in a candid interview released Thursday.

Chirlane McCray, 58, said her relationship with de Blasio was made possible “by putting aside the assumptions I had about the form and package my love would come in.”

The interview, with Essence magazine, comes 34 years after McCray penned a groundbreaking 1979 essay for Essence entitled, “I Am a Lesbian,” about coming out as a gay black woman.

The latest research that I have seen, read, and heard about indicate that sexuality is, indeed, somewhat fluid, within a set range (for most people). You are pretty much “born that way,” but you can range. Just as straight guys are willing to do “gay for pay” pornography and college students will “experiment.” But in addition to that, womens’ self-reported sexuality is (a) not only more fluid than mens’ but it is also much more of a “bell curve” where there are many more women who identify as bisexual than men. I’m not saying the majority of women are bisexual, but rather if you divide a histogram of womens’ sexuality by mens’, you would see a much larger peak in the middle.

Put another way: Men typically are either straight or gay, very few are bisexual. Women, on the other hand, typically are less extreme and are closer to the middle. When I asked a research about this and whether there were biases in reporting – since it’s much more acceptable in Western societies for women to be bisexual than it is for men, I was told that this is typically seen across cultures.

This is a long, round-about way of me saying that while I find it surprising that a woman who formerly identified as a lesbian would now identify as straight, it’s not as surprising as if a man were to do it. I also have no reason to doubt her story and think that she secretly is still a lesbian. It does happen. But, most importantly perhaps, is that she should be perfectly free to identify as whatever sexuality she feels most comfortable, free of coercion and judgement.

On the other hand, World Net Daily readers almost certainly disagree with me en masse. When I loaded the story before a four-hour plane flight yesterday morning, it had been up for 8 hours and had 1 1-star rating along with 25 comments. When I had landed, it had 64 comments and 5 ratings (3.4/5 stars). At both times, the highest-rated comment was by “MidNightRider2001” with 14 up-votes, then 21 up-votes, and 0 down-votes: “This is nonsense! As we know from our liberal propaganda, sexuality is fixed from birth and can not change. It’s an absolute value like 1+1=2, E=MC2 or F=MA. There is no way a lesbian could become heterosexual or vice versa. It violates all known liberal laws of the universe.”

That represents one of the themes in the comments: Hypocrisy and absolutes. What we might call the “False Dichotomy” fallacy. Another example of this is from “Texas Vetgal” who wrote: “Maybe she was never really a Lesbian, just a ***, turned Gold digger. So, if you DECIDE for yourself you no longer are gay… Thats ok. But if you seek help thru organizations that help the individuals choosing to be heterosexual, then thats illegal. Only Liberals would pass such stupid laws. Federal Government promotes immorality, and punishes normality.”

That typifies not only the false dichotomy, but also the second theme in the comments of just calling her an opportunist and a gold digger. The third class is simple revulsion, such as by “PatriorFirst1776” (“VOMIT, GAG, PUKE!”) and “luvourtroops” (“SICK !!!”).

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To be ‘fair’, campaigns and the media don’t really talk about fluidity but also tend to hype up the point that sexuality is not something you choose. The fact that slogans and talking points tend to be simplified for easy consumption would lead to the false dichotomy, especially if sentence 1 were applied. Of course, that assumes that people swallow the media without question or further looking at you know, data.

Speaking of which, it would be useful and interesting to see these studies you mention…